GUARD
by The Jade Tipster
Summary: Thirty years have passed. Prostitution is legal, city ordinances prevent aiding and abetting a homeless man, and a murderous villain imprisoned years before is on the loose. A new generation of Guardians is needed now more than ever.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Hey, everybody. This is a story that I wrote a little over a year ago. Since that time, the story has developed and evolved in my head, but I can't really move forward with it until I edit all of the chapters I've already written and posted on this website. Hopefully, this version is much more detailed. Enjoy it (please)!  
**Disclaimer:** Don't sue me, Disney. I freely admit that I don't own W.i.t.c.h.

* * *

**Chapter One**

It was a Friday. Students and teachers alike scurried busily down the arched and aging hallways of Franklin Tech High School, rushing to head home, wishing it were summer.

In the school's nearly deserted chemistry lab, five freshman stared intently at a package neatly wrapped in black gift paper, a perfectly-square box that sat somehow pretentiously on a lab table. For them, the day was not yet over. In fact, things were just beginning.

Amaya approached the package, wielding a rather dingy pair of tweezers. With military precision, she took hold of the package's jovial red ribbon and lightly tugged. The other four freshmen watched with nervous anticipation as the crimson fabric bean to slowly unfurl under Amaya's patient gaze.

"Hey, Amaya," Gaby quipped squeakily from Amaya's left side. "It isn't rocket science. It's just a package."

"Everything's rocket science," Amaya answered flatly.

She removed the ribbon and peeled away the shiny, black wrapping. The other kids watched with anticipation as Amaya gripped the flaps of the box and ripped them open.

Nothing! Not just the bare inside of an empty package, but absolutely nothing. As the freshmen peered over the edges of the box, they saw no bottom, no sides, just total emptiness. They were staring into a black hole. Gabrielle was the first to speak.

"Well, that's interesting."

_Boom!_

A brilliant flash of hot white light exploded from inside the box, blinding the students and sending them into muddled panic. A crack of thunder rumbled in their ears and sent purple spots darting before their eyes. The blast threw the five students all across the room, knocking them into unconsciousness, swarming their minds instantly to black.

* * *

That previous night, a heavy rain had pounded nearby Rock Island Prison. The rain, of course, wasn't unusual. It always rained in Eden—a fine, sad, steady rain, dirty with the smoke of mills and the fumes from car exhaust. The rain was dirty with other things, too; hurting things. Old angers, unforgiving grievances, the ashen taste of death. And the rain never stopped.

"Lights out!" yelled prison guard Morgan McCook as he walked the halls of Cellblock Zenith. The staccato clicks of his polished black shoes echoed against the cement walls and flooring, nearly lost in the raging torrent outside.

He approached each cell door importantly, rapping on the metal doors and peering into the small plastic windows to witness inmates switching off their lights and crawling dejectedly into bed. McCook rattled off the names of the prisoners aloud to Thomas, the new guy.

"Gen'ral Nash," McCook drawled in his exaggerated Texan accent, pointing into a cell. "E's a rough one. And watch out for this 'un—that's Nuke Warren. Ne'er put your hands near 'is mouth…or any other part of 'is body, for that matter."

Thomas looked through the window and swallowed hard as Nuke graced him with a long, cold stare.

McCook seemed to take pleasure out of the young man's discomfort. "Yeah," he said, somewhat proudly, as he continued the tour, "these guys down 'ere are the worst of the worst. Criminally insane, some people call 'em. I just call 'em _nuts_!"

The two men stopped at the end of the hall and approached the final cell door. This one had two extra locks securing it. Thomas eyed the door apprehensively, and odd shiver ran up his spine. Idly, he wondered if it had been a smart idea to take this job.

This guy…" McCook rubbed his hands fondly over cell's door iron-casings, then grinned. "This guy 'ere was the worst—#90068. 'E's been in 'ere the longest. 'Is name is _class-i-fied._" Abruptly, he shouted through the window, "Ain't that right, 90068? You're ancient 'round 'ere."

There was no response. Thomas shivered again, but McCook shrugged dismissively. "Eh, he 'on't talk much."

"I'm afraid to ask what he did," Thomas gulped.

McCook grinned and pulled Thomas aside, then whispered: "They brought 'im in thirty years aho, so I warn't 'round. But the rumor is that he could you in yer tracks, just by lookin' at ya. No one's ever seen 'imm do it, but you never know…"

"That true?" Thomas asked, staring wide-eyed at McCook.

_Wham!_ McCook slapped his nightstick hard against the cell door, making Thomas wince. The older guard giggled like a schoolgirl as lightning cracked through the air outside.

"Why 'on't you go an' find out?" he said slyly. "See 'is tray over there? You have to go in every night to git it."

Thomas peered into the cell. The lights were still on, and cast a urine-yellow glow on the cramped space within. On the floor, plastic tray lay empty. In front of it, chained to rickety iron bed, Prisoner 390068 sat motionless. His face was buried almost childishly into his pillow.

"Fine," Thomas said, sounding braver than he felt. "Open the door and let me get it over with."

There was no conspiratorial grin as McCook unlocked the door and stepped aside, and Thomas felt cowardly without it. He walked in, approaching the prisoner with his right hand hovering above his gun belt.

"Alright, #90068," he said. His voice trembled as he spoke, and he struggled to control it. "I may be the new guy around here, but don't give me any trouble, okay? I see you ate all your dinner—that's good. Now I'm just going to take it away, okay?"

The prisoner stayed silent.

Thomas averted his gaze from the prisoner and bent to pick up the tray. As he did, he felt a rush of uncomfortably hot air rush over his head and heard the baleful sound of howling wind fill the small room.

Thomas looked up quickly to check the window for a leak, then realized that there wasn't one. Nervously, he glanced over at McCook, who stood statue-still in the doorway.

"Boss?" There was no answer. Thomas stood up and stepped toward the door. "McCook?"

McCook, frozen indefinitely in place, had been transformed. He looked like a mannequin in a wax museum, an expression of horror molded into his caricature of a face.

"Unless you'd like me to do the same thing to you," the prisoner politely whispered into Thomas's ear, "I'd suggest you get me out of these." As though Thomas were daft, the prisoner jangled his shackles and mimed using a key to disengage an imaginary lock.

Thick with fear, Thomas obeyed. He yanked the ring of keys from McCook's still hand and quickly unlocked the shackles. The prisoner rubbed his wrists and ankles, finally free after all these years.

"Much better," he said pleasantly, and patted Thomas on the back. "Job well done."

"You promised to let me go," Thomas stuttered, sounding as petulant as a child.

"You really _are_ the new guy, aren't you?" the prisoner said, amused, and a frighteningly charming smile spread across his lips.

Thomas swallowed a scream as Prisoner #90068's eyes became as wide as CDs, and a blast of howling wind paralyzed the guard, coating him with the same waxy glaze that covered McCook.

The prisoner hurried out the door. He rushed through the prison, cruelly inflicting his paralyzing punishment on anyone who got in his way. Guards ran at him from all over the cellblock, but within minutes, the prison was filled with human statues, and its most dangerous prisoner had escaped.

He stepped outside, looking off into the water that surrounded the island. Through the heavy rain he suddenly saw a small ball of fire coming toward him. As it got closer, it slowly descended, landing softly on the ground just in front of him.

It was a man strapped to a two-person jetpack.

"Hello, Leduc," the prisoner said, greeting his old henchman. Leduc, a small blonde man wearing an old Fench Legionnaires uniform, nodded silently, for he did not speak—neither in English or his native French.

The prisoner quickly harnessed himself into the jetpack. Leduc opened up a small monitor and brought up a map of the surrounding area. He typed in some coordinates and took control of the throttle, squeezing it gently as flames poured out of the bottom.

"Can you feel it, Leduc? It's time to get back to work!" the prisoner said, cackling happily as they blasted off into the night sky, leaving behind nothing but a trail of smoke and the prison number torn from his uniform.

As the two men flew away from the island, the nearby metropolitan sprawl of Cambridge was oblivious to what was happening. The Shadow of Evil—the powerful force that had given back the prisoner his powers after thirty years—was returning to the city. And now, he was too. The chain had been unleashed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Woot, an update! Enjoy it, and I'll be back next week (or so).

* * *

**Chapter Two  
**Somewhere in Eden, Ursula Olsen woke in the dark. Through the slats on the window shades, red-gold beams of sunlight slipped, slanting shadowy bars over the bed. It was like waking in a cell. 

For a moment, she simple lay there, shuddering, while the dream faded. Then, in a lazy voice that tasted like fear, she murmured, "Time."

Numbers, brilliantly green, hovered before her eyes, and she squinted into the darkness. 7:45. This was not good.

With a groan rising deep in her throat, she staggered out of bed, the overhead lights flickering on automatically to thirty-percent. Blind with lethargy, she stumbled over her vintage acoustic guitar and knocked over a cup of unsweetened pomegranate juice that had been sitting in her room untouched for two days. The juice spilled all over a raggedy pair of cutoff shorts that had been laid out neatly on the floor—the very ones she'd planned on wearing that day.

"Dammit," she hissed, and kicked the messed shorts under her bed before hurrying to her closet. At random, she yanked out a pair of army-green cargo pants and a ribbed camisole, reminding herself that she needed to get rid of that guitar. First, because it was ridiculously old and was missing four strings, and, second, because, because she had no idea how to play.

Ursula ran to the bathroom, hopping into a pair of white sneakers on the way. The petite teen had to stand on her tiptoes in order to peek into the mirror that was hung over the sink. She winced once at her reflection: her whisky-colored eyes were sunken and red from lack of decent sleep and were prominent in her colorless face. Her brilliantly purple hair with peroxide-blonde streaks was horribly tousled. Ursula changed her streaks' color often, and had been hoping to re-dye it today. But there was no time to do anything about that now.

It was her first week of high school and Ursula had already gotten two warnings for being late, and one more would get her at least a week of detention. She had also gotten warnings for not doing her homework, for her attitude and for listening to music during class, but those were other, smaller stories.

Ursula dashed out of her apartment, which was situated above the garage of her uncle's house, and hurried down the back staircase. It was a conveniently private entrance that only Ursula used, making it very easy to sneak in and out of the house when she needed to.

VAROOM…OOM…SPUTTER…SPUTTER…SPUT. _Great_, she thought sarcastically as she tried to rev the motor on her electric-powered scooter back to life. Ursula had forgotten to charge the battery the night before, and now it barely had enough juice to get moving.

She gave it another try, and it weakly whined to life. She hopped on immediately and took off, pulling from the alley behind the garage onto Second Street.

Second was noisy and crowded a party that rowdy guests never left. Street, pedestrian, and sky traffic were miserable, choking the air with pungent bodies and vehicles. When she'd first move to Eden, Ursula remembered it as a hot spot for wrecks and crushed tourists who were busy gaping at the show to get out of the way.

Steam was raising from the stationary and portable food stands that dotted the street, offering everything from rice noodles to soy dogs for the swarming crowds. She had to swerve to dodge a man who smelled considerably worse than his illegal bottle of homebrew, and took his flipped middle finger as a matter of course.

After clever maneuvering and considerable shortcuts, Ursula pulled up to her school on ReGale Drive.

Franklin Tech was an old school, old and big. It sat right in the middle of Eden, a grubby pile of bricks that sat staunchly amongst skyscrapers of gleaming metal that knifed into the sky from hilts of concrete. The grass was green, at least, but it was littered with soda tubes and empty birth control packages.

The school was public, and although Ursula's few friends from junior high had gone off to private school, she chose not to. Private schools had more rules than public schools, and Ursula didn't want any more of those.

She approached the school's back door and hopped off her scooter. In one smooth motion, she grabbed the scooter's handle and flipped it into one easy-to-carry unit. It was a practiced move, and she did it without breaking stride.

After scanning her thumbprint into the doorjamb, she crept quietly inside the building, but it was already too late. Thanks to the new attendance scanners implemented by the school board, roll call could be taken digitally, and the classic ruse of sneaking passed the teacher would never work again.

Resigned, she shoved open the classroom door.

"Well, well, well," Ms. Kowalski said to Ursula the second she appeared. "If it isn't Rainbow Head." She cackled a self-satisfied laugh that revealed sharp, metal teeth. Ursula wanted to point out that a rainbow had seven colors and that her hair only had two, but she figured she was in enough trouble already.

"That makes three tardies in one week," Ms. Kowalski snorted and made a note on her disciplinary tablet with a silver stylus. "That means you'll be joining me after school today and getting a note to take home to your parents. Won't they be proud?"

Ursula frowned. She wondered what Ms. Kowalski would say if she told her how her parents had died in a car crash when she was seven, how she now lived with her uncle, a guy she really wasn't all that close to. The bitch would feel pretty bad, wouldn't she?

But again, Ursula said nothing. What was the point?

Ursula just flounced to her seat in the back of the room. After plugging her thumb into the desk scanner, she propped her chin in her hands and tried to think about something—anything—other than chemistry class.

* * *

"Good morning, dudes and dudettes!" the chipper voice of Dr. Florence Radmin shouted, flooding the speakers of every classroom in the school. "WAZZUP?!?" It was the fifth time the students of Franklin Tech had been subjected to Principal Radmin's morning announcements, and they were steadily getting worse. 

"Auditions for this fall's school play will be held today in the auditorium during ninth period. It'll be totally _frosty. _So don't be _lame_! Come try out!"

In the school's front office, not far from the office of Dr. Radmin—or "Dr. Rad" as she told the students to call her—freshman David Kent filled out a data tablet. It was something David was getting good at. Franklin Tech was his fifth school in three years, and every time he arrived at a new one, he got yet another tablet to fill out. "What are your favorite classes? What sports do you play? What level of math have you completed?" The only thing that ever changed was the name of the school.

But these forms were different. They were for his new job—his first job. It was only a part-time position in the school office, but still, David saw it as a chance at responsibility, not to mention some extra cash.

Not that David really lacked in either. David stayed out of trouble, and his parents had good jobs. His mother had something to do with interior design, and his dad worked in marketing…or sales…or sales marketing…or something. Come to think of it, David's parents didn't really talk all that much about their own lives.

David's grip tightened around the stylus and he swallowed a lump in his throat. David got along just fine with his parents; it was relating to kids his own age that was his problem. Every time he would make a friend, his dad's job would end up moving him and the rest of the family, and David would have to say goodbye. Eventually, he just stopped trying. Pretty blue eyes the same clear color as the sky began to darken with raw emotion.

But maybe it would be different at Franklin Tech. Maybe David's family would stay in Eden for a while. And maybe, just maybe, David might meet some other students he could call—_Oww!_

David managed to not say it aloud, though he thought it loudly enough. He looked over at the rude girl who had just knocked into him as she breezed by. David said nothing. Not because he was being polite, but because he was terrified of her!

Dressed in a black cocktail dress and a black flannel shirt, the girl looked like she might kill him if he even dared to open his mouth. After gracing him with a poisonous look, she stomped her steel-toed combat boots down the office hallway, her oversize arm bag bouncing jovially on her back. David sighed. Maybe he should just stick to the paperwork. It was one thing he understood.

* * *

The Lyric, a modest movie theater located in the deepest bowels of Eden. Her mother first took her there when she was two or three years old. It was her first brush with true magic, and it was when she'd first found out that magic tasted of buttered popcorn and excitement.

This was years before she'd been able to comprehend even the rudiments of the movie story, yet she was enthralled by the movements, the ceaseless rippling of fluid movement, on the great screen above her. How many times in her lost childhood she could return with yearning to this movie, recognizing it at once despite the variety of its titles, its many actors, its many colors and sounds. For always there was the Fair Princess.

Always, Raven Rodriguez could see the Princess for what she was. Daft and adorably delightful, with a bounce in her step and a sparkle in her smile that didn't quite leap into her monstrous blue eyes—and of course they were blue. Eyes as deep and blue as the sea, and hair like spun gold. But never, never did the Princess have black eyes and hair, nut-brown skin and a bulbous belly. Never, never.

Yet, even as she entered high school, she continued to seek out the movie. Slipping into theaters in obscure districts of the city, maneuvering around her mother with almost beautiful lies and manipulations. When insomnia struck, she'd sneak out of the apartment of a bodega and secure a ticket for a midnight show. She'd skip gym class and grab a bus for the theater, always back in time for the school's final dismissal. She wasn't fleeing her own life (though her life had grown baffling to her as teenage life does to those who live it) but instead easing into a parenthesis within that life, stopping time as a child might arrest the movement of a clock's hands: by brute force. The costumes of the actors, the hair styles, even the faces and voices of the movie people changed with the years, and she can remember, not clearly but in fuzzy fragments, her mown lost emotions, the loneliness of her childhood only partly assuaged by the looming screen.

She'd fallen in love with the color black, simply because she'd worn it so much as a kid. _Aunt Isabella had an aneurysm, you say? _And on the black would come, a comfort amongst the tears and memories of a boisterous young woman with light in her eyes. _Perrito was hit by the ice cream truck, you say! _ And there she would be, cloaked in black, standing at the edge of her little dog's grave. _Papa is gone, you say? He went out for a pack of Marlboros and never, never came back? _And the black stayed, a shield from the harsh realities of the real world, a chain that held her securely to the happily-ever-after of moving pictures.

Raven shifted slightly on the hard wooden seat inside of the guidance counselor's office and frowned. They must she was crazy. Those People always did.

She must have said this thought aloud, for Miss Simmons, the counselor, made a funny a look and said, "I don't think you're crazy, Raven."

Raven's black-smeared lips pursed in blatant disbelief. Everyone thought she was crazy. Except maybe Raven's mom. But then again, Raven's mom was kind of crazy herself.

"According to your junior high records," Ms. Simmons continued, after studying her comp screen for a long moment, "you've managed to maintain pretty good grades, although…"

_Here it comes_, thought Raven thought, and glared at the filth caked beneath her talon-like fingernails.

"It wouldn't hurt you to apply yourself a little bit more."

If Raven had a credit for every time someone told her this, she could buy that new portable personal comp unit she was saving up for.

"Look," Ms. Simmons said, taking off her silver-rimmed spectacles, "high school isn't just about studying. It's about finding your place. It's about getting involved."

Raven didn't like the sound of that, and gnawed on her lip to keep from saying so aloud.

"You're not like other girls, Raven, I realize this," Ms. Simmons continued, unaware of the panic she'd caused. "But not all school activities are made for people who blend in; some are made specifically for people stand out. You know, the school play is holding auditions today."

"Yes, I heard," Raven said. Her voice was cold and polite, almost eerily so.

"Maybe you should check it out. Maybe it would give you a chance to show off a side of yourself that no one has seen before."

Raven blinked once, then twice. Silence stretched.

Finally: "All right. Perhaps."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** Some updated-ness. Read, if you want; enjoy, if you want; review, if you want. I'm going to bed.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Three **

Amaya Wendelhall was a dork. She was neither ashamed nor prideful of it; it was simply what she was and had always been. Once, not long before, she'd been embarrassed of her apparent intellect. Now, she simply ignored the snickers of her classmates.

Her hand didn't shake as she held it in the air. Her voice didn't quaver as she spoke, so that her hand was no only seen, but heard as well. That was progress. On her first day as the New Amaya, she'd been nearly catatonic by the end of the school day. By the time she'd gotten back to her home, she'd been a quivering, quaking mess and had solved that little problem by taking a couple of blockers and sliding into the safe cocoon of drug-induced sleep.

She'd white-knuckled through the second day, quivered through third and gritted her way through the fourth. At this point she was merely too numb to be horrified at the prospect of _not_ blending into the woodwork.

She paid little attention to he laughter as her hand flailed clumsily above her head. Instead of relenting with mortification, she held it higher. And struggled to keep a flush to darken her cheeks.

"Lucky you, Amaya," the teacher finally said, her voice as dry as dust. She made a note on her comp. "Looks like you got the job. Be here after school." It wasn't as though Ms. Kowalski had had much of a choice; Amaya was the only one who'd volunteered.

Still, Amaya smiled ecstatically. Behind her thick, round glasses and messy brown hair, the gears of her brain began to turn. Both her bedroom and her basement were already cluttered with chemistry equipment, half-finished robotic models and the winning projects from the city's last three science fairs. She had reached the limits of what she could build with the things she found in the garbage.

But now… the possibilities were endless. Bunsen burners, scalpels and trays, wires and clips! The power was overwhelming, and sat right beyond her sticky fingertips.

* * *

All Gabrielle Wright wanted was a big, chocolaty candy bar. She'd spent most of her morning in Testing, and had had to duck out her usual midday lunch off of school campus when a geometry teacher almost caught her in the Lunch Box. She was not going back in Testing for something as stupid as being off-campus; besides, three more transgressions would surely get her expelled, and her mother would quite gladly kill her. 

She could've zipped through an InstaStore before sneaking back to school, but she preferred the little deli on the corner by Franklin Tech—despite, or maybe because of, the fact that it was run by François, a rude, bad-tempered refugee who had fled to the United States after the Social Reform Military Coup had overthrown the French government seventeen years before.

He claimed he hated America and Americans, and the SRMC had been dispatched within six months of the army, but François remained, nagging and complaining behind the counter in the deli where he enjoyed dispensing insults and political absurdities, even though he could just pack up and head back to France.

Gaby called him Frank, just to annoy him, and dropped in at least once a week to see what scheme he had developed to try to short-credit her.

Her mind on the candy bar, she stepped through the automatic door. It had no more than begun to whisper shut before she registered something incredibly wrong.

The man standing at the counter had on a black hooded jacket, which masked all but his massive size. Six-five, she ball-parked, and easily two-fifty pounds. She didn't need to see François thin, terrified face to know there was trouble. She could smell it, as ripe and sour as the vegetable hash that was today's special.

The man turned. He had pale skin and the eyes of a very desperate man, though his face was contorted into an angry expression. Even a she filed away her description, she looked at the small, spherical object he held in his hand.

The homemade explosive devise was worry enough. The fact that it trembled in the massive man's hand was a far deal worse. Homemade boomers were dreadfully unstable. The idiot was likely to kill all of them by just sweating on it.

She shot François a quick, warning look. She discreetly tucked the Testing band into the sleeve of her jacket, then, keeping her hands in plain sight, crossed to the counter.

"I don't want any trouble," Gaby said, letting her voice tremble as nervously as the thief's hand. Even then, she marveled at her acting skill. "Please, mister, I got a baby at home."

"Shut up. Just shut up. Get on the floor. Get down on the fucking floor." Gaby knelt, her hand floating to the hilt of her straight-edged razor.

"All of it," the man ordered, gesturing with the deadly, little ball. "I want all of it. Cash, credits, tokens. Make it fast."

"It's been a slow day," François whined. "You must understand business isn't what it was. You Americans—"

"D'you wanna eat this?" the man asked, shoving the explosive into François's face.

"No, no." Panicked, François punched the security code on his safe with shaking fingers. Gaby saw the man glance at the money inside, and then up at the camera that was busily recording the entire transaction.

She saw it in his face. He knew his image was locked there, and that all the money in New York couldn't erase it. The explosive would, tossed carelessly over his shoulder as he ran down the street to be swallowed by traffic.

She sucked in a large breath, like a diver going under the surface. She came up hard under his arm. The solid jolt had the device flying free. Screams, curses, prayers. She caught it quite easily, a high fly. Even as she closed her had around it, the thief swung out.

It was the back of the hand rather than the fist, and Gabrielle considered herself lucky. It hit her high on her neck, below her ear, because she had tried to turn away when she saw the blow coming. She saw stars prancing around her head as she hit a stand of soy chips, but she held tightly onto the homemade boomer.

_Wrong hand, goddamn it, wrong hand_, she had time to think as she struggled to use her left hand to free her razorblade from her ankle holster, but two hundred and fifty pounds of desperation fell on top of her.

"Hit the alarm, you idiot," Gaby yelled to François, who stood with his mouth opening and closing while she fought to kick the thief off of her. "Hit the damn alarm!" She moaned and grunted as the blow to her ribs stole her breath. This time she used his fist.

He was sobbing then, scratching and clawing at her arm in an attempt to reach the explosive. Blood flowed freely from the deep scratches. "I need the money. I have to have it. I'll kill you. I'll kill you all." She managed to bring her knee up. The age-old defense bought her a few seconds but lacked the power to incapacitate. She saw stars again as her head smacked sharply on the side of a counter. Dozens of the candy bars she craved rained down on her.

"You son of a bitch. You crazy son of a bitch," she felt herself saying, over and over as she landed there weak fists to his face, using the arm he had scratched so deeply. With blood spurting from his nose, he grabbed her arm.

And she knew it was going to break. Knew she would feel that sharp, sweet pain run up her arm, that thin but solid crack as the bone fractured.

But just as she drew in a breath to scream, as her vision began to gray with agony, his weight was off her.

The ball still held in her hand, she rolled up on her haunches, struggling to breathe and fighting the need to retch. From that position she saw the shiny, black shoes that always said beat cop.

"You all right, ma'am? Do you want the MT's?"

She didn't want the med-techs. She wanted a damn candy bar. She drew herself up to her full height, wincing as she felt pain shoot in her ribs. She noted that the would-be thief was in restraints and that one of the two cops she had seen had been wise enough to use his stunner.

"It's Gaby Wright," she corrected with fluid efficiently. "Y'know…the lieutenant's daughter."

The cop nodded in recognition, then scowled. "Don't you have school?"

"Nope," she lied easily. "I'm on my lunch break. We need a safe box—quickly." She watched the cops pale when they saw what she held in her hand. "This thing has got to be neutralized."

"Ma'am." The first cop took the bomb carefully from her hand, and both officers took of for Cop Central, the police station a few blocks away.

Gaby reached down, favoring her bleeding arm, and chose a Galaxy bar that hadn't been flattened by the wrestling match. She began to walk out the door, steadily opening the candy bar one-handed.

"You didn't pay for that," François shouted after her.

"Fuck you, Frank," she shouted back, and kept going.

.

* * *

On the outskirts of Eden, there was a mansion. Fortress, more like. Its four stories towered over the frosted trees of Sunny Park. It was one of the old buildings, close to two hundred years old, and was built of stone. 

There was a lot of glass, and lights burning in the window. An overlarge evergreen was in the lawn, lightly dusted with holo-lights. There was also a security gate, made of wrought iron mingled with gold, behind which an array of evergreen shrubs and elegant trees were creatively arranged. The driveway that led through the gate opened into a circular cobblestone cul-de-sac that surrounded a whistling fountain.

Even more impressive than the architecture and landscape was the intense quiet. No traffic snarls, no pedestrian chaos. Even the sky over head was subtly different that the one downtown. Here, you could see the full golden glare of the sun and the fresh, pale blue of the skies, rather than the glint and gleam of transports.

At the foot of granite steps, a tall, slender, vaguely beautiful woman stood with her hands on her hips. She was dark-haired, implacably-eyed, nobly-nosed, and dressed in an outdated green suit with a rather old-fashioned tie, with a small but shiny diamond gleaming on the end.

She perused the surrounding grounds with an air of satisfaction, then sadness. The lawn and the bushes were neat and trimmed with care—she had made sure of that personally. But the house seemed cold, unlived in.

The woman bent over to pick up the afternoon paper. She couldn't quite remember how long she'd been doing this—cleaning the house, taking phone calls, making sure everything was kept in perfect order. These chores had kept her busy for many years. Somehow, today felt different.

She leaned forward to brush a few leaves from the front step, and a sudden rush of wind immediately blew them away. She looked up to see a taxicab speed toward the mansion. Like a bolt of lightning, it stopped directly in front of her without so much as a tire screech. The engine coughed and sputtered, a passenger stepped out, and the taxi pulled away, zipping off at the same blinding speed with which it had arrived.

The thin woman looked at the passenger—a broad shouldered, imposing man in a suit. She recognized the face—a face she only knew from the many pictures she'd seen around the house. It was her boss.

"Sir?" the woman asked in disbelief, her misty blue eyes widening in delicate surprise. She instantly snapped to attention and presented the mansion with a sweeping gesture.

Her boss smiled. "How are you?"

The woman relaxed, smiled back. She had eerily straight and white teeth. "Better, now that you're here."

"The place looks nice," her boss responded, looking it over and nodding.

"Just as you left it. Is...is it time, sir?"

"Yes. The time has come. The balance has been tipped. We must take action."

"Brilliant," the woman said. "To be honest, I was getting quite bored."

"Well, now you have a job to do. You must contact them. You must make them aware of what is coming."

The woman nodded silently and opened the large gate for her boss, then swung it shut with a loud clang.

* * *

_Author's Note: I didn't make it particularly clear what Ms. Kowalski wants Amaya to stay after school for. Really, for nothing. I've no idea how to rework that part, but I wanted to throw this chapter up here. I want to make it clear, also, that Amaya wants to "borrow" some of Ms. Kowalski's equipment. Thus, the reference to her sticky fingers.  
Also, "Testing" his short for "Psychological Testing". Just for future reference. If I get enough of these unique terms, I'll make a glossary. _

_Sayonara._


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** I am Making a Commitment! I've actually got this chappie up relatively on time. My mother would be so proud...Here's another chapter, and really that last bit of the character's introduction. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Four **

Ninth period—the extra hour at the end of the school day reserved for sports, detention, and study hall. In the school auditorium, the auditions for the fall play were beginning.

Just below the stage, in front of a group, Ms. Simmons—who, not surprisingly, was also the drama coach—welcomed them. _I should have known she was behind this_, Raven thought savagely, and glared at the toes of her boots. Her hair tumbled forward to shield her face.

"Thank you all for coming," Ms. Simmons said to the group. Her smile glittered lecherously beneath the harsh theater lights. "It's good to see so many of you interested in the stage."

Raven looked around at the other students through her curtain of hair. They did look…unique. Surely none of them could be accused of being part of the 'in' crowd. She recognized the kids she'd stood with on the sidelines in gym class, the left-behind losers: fat girls, girls with thick, prescription glasses, girls lacking "motor coordination," asthmatic girls who puffed and panted if they had to trot a few yards. Then there were the wiry yet weird: the punks, the New Agers, the anarchists. Kids hopped up on Push and Jazz bounced around in the shadowed seats beside the druggies who regularly toked Zeus. Hard-core dramatists, discernable by their brightly-colored clothing and eclectic hairstyles, hovered moodily towards the front.

_And then me._

"Now, I see a lot of freshman in the group today, and I'm sure some of you have never auditioned for a play before, so here's how it will work—"

Before she could continue, the double doors at the back of the auditorium slid open with a loud click, and a curly-haired brunette with odd, turquoise eyes spilled through. Panting, she stumbled down to join the other students. The neon orange band that circled her slender wrist identified her as one of the Tested.

The girl grinned sheepishly, revealing small, white teeth. "What'd I miss, eh?"

Ms. Simmons shook her head slightly, then continued. "Okay, up here I have a few scenes from this fall's play. Come on up and grab a copy, then find a partner to perform it with. You've got half an hour to rehearse before the audition. Good luck, everyone."

Raven watched as the other students ignored her and began to partner off. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. Typical. It was no different than the rest of the school.

Maybe she could do a monologue instead. Wasn't that an option?

A slight movement to her right side caught Raven's attention. She looked up quickly and caught the gaze of that kid who'd come in late, the girl with unfashionably baggy clothes and a Testing band.

"What're you angry about?" the girl asked tonelessly.

"I…I'm not angry," Raven stammered. A blush rose up her neck. She wasn't very used to anyone talking to her, particularly not one of the Tested.

The girl nodded towards Raven's clenched hands, then shrugged. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, dama. There are all kinds of anger. Some kinds are just more useful than others."

"I'm not angry," Raven insisted. "I…I'm just…"

"Saying you're not angry is one kind," the girl interjected, her voice firm. "Not very useful at all, though." She slid into the seat beside Raven and absently rubbed the orange band around her wrist.

"I shouldn't be speaking to you," Raven said, eyeing the band nervously. She didn't notice—but the girl did—that her fists relaxed. "I should go."

"It's because of this thing, isn't it?" The girl gestured towards the band and sighed. "I just got out of Testing this morning. It really doesn't mean anything. I'm safe, at least until the next round." A look of quiet contemplation stole over her face, then she added, "M'name's Gabrielle. Who're you?"

"Me? Oh, well…" What could a name hurt? Raven could see no tinge of madness in this girl's eyes. "Raven. My name is Raven."

"Pleased to meet you, miss." They sat in silence for a moment, then Gaby blurted, "Wanna be partners? Y'know, for auditions?"

"I…well…"

"Oh, you don't _have_ to," Gabrielle hurried to say. Her mouth quirked upward in a small, reassuring smile.

"Well, no, but…I…can you act?"

"No," Gabrielle answered without shame. "Drama really isn't my thing. But, see, that's the point. Next to me, you'll look like a movie star."

Raven grinned, despite herself. Light sparked in her eyes. "All right," she said. "Why not?"

* * *

At the same time that Raven and Gabrielle were picking up their scripts and flipping through them, Ursula was just arriving in the chemistry lab for detention. She'd taken her time to get back to the lab, busying herself with retying her shoes and dawdling in the girls' restroom. Now she came to the room to find her efforts wasted on a scrawny Asian chick with a nondescript face and messy black hair. 

Ursula frowned haughtily at the other girl. "Who're you? Where's Kowalski?"

The Asian girl jumped back from her perch at the Ms. Kowalski's desk and shoved her hands guiltily into the pockets of her jumper. "Oh! A-Amaya. Is muh-my name."

Ursula's eyes narrowed. "And Kowalski?"

"The fruh-front office," the girl said. "I've been p-put in ch-charge o-o-of—"

"Get yourself together," Ursula snapped. "What do you think I'm gonna do, bite your head off?"

The culpable look that crept into Amaya's eyes spoke volumes. "Well, I…okay," she said feebly, her eyes cast toward the floor. She hesitated for moment, then managed to stammer, "Ms. Kowalski t-t-t-told me that y-you're supposed to st-start cleaning out the supply cl-cluh-closet 'til she gets back."

Ursula's lip twitched. "Clean?"

Amaya, apparently not trusting herself to speak, only nodded.

Ursula glanced down at her nails, neatly filed though unpolished, then at the fresh, clean calluses on her palms. She frowned, then glared over at the massive metal supply closet at the back of the room. "Uh-uh," she decided. "No way. I'm out." She stormed toward the door, flipping out her scooter on the way, but Amaya rushed to stop her.

"Pl-please don't go," Amaya pleaded. "I mean, w-well. It's nuh-not that bad. Not r-r-ruh-really."

As Ursula stared at her with an impenetrable air, Amaya's voice faltered. "S-see, there's a lot o-of cuh-cool stuff in that closet. It'll b-be…fun."

_Is this girl insane? _

"Besides," Amaya continued, "if you duh-dump now, you'll j-just end up getting d-double detention."

Ursula sighed. Her uncle Daigh would kill her if that happened. She flipped her scooter back and tucked into her bag.

"I'll help you." Relieved, Amaya grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and walked over to the supply cabinet. She pulled it open and was instantly bombarded by an avalanche of plastic beakers, test tubes and buckets. She sighed and blew a loose strand of hair out of her face.

Ursula sighed and began to help the younger girl.

* * *

Wrapped in shiny, black paper and decorated with a simple, red ribbon, the package that had just arrived in the front office sat on the secretary's desk. It wasn't at all interesting, seeing as the gift paper didn't flash different colors and the ribbon didn't dance loopily in the air. Actually, its utter lack of flamboyance was provoking enormous speculation. 

"What is it? Candy?"

"Is it a present from a secret admirer?"

"Why is it addressed to Ms. Kowalski's chemistry lab?"

"I don't know," Ms. Kowalski insisted, "but I'll be sure to put out an announcement as soon as I open it, you busybodies!"

The staff stood by, as though she fully intended to open the box at any moment. Ms. Kowalski noticed. She fixed them all with a cold stare until they busied themselves with office chores, then bent back over the info tablets that had brought her to the office in the first place.

David cast one last look at the peculiar package, then sank back into his desk chair and stared blankly at the ceiling.

"Hey, what's your name?" The question seemed to come from Ms. Kowalski, though she hadn't looked up from her papers.

David's attention snapped to the teacher. "Who, me? It's, uh, David."

"If you're not too busy, 'uh, David'" she said, still without looking up, "do you think you could run that down to my room? There's a girl named Amaya there. She'll take care of it."

David wasn't too busy. Actually, David couldn't believe how incredibly not busy he was. So far, his new job hadn't been particularly demanding. Unfortunately, it wasn't particularly interesting either. About all he had done over the past half hour was alphabetize some files and sneak a few games of solitaire on his comp unit. He was more than happy to run an errand, especially if it meant he might learn the contents of the strange, black package.

* * *

"Okay, we're going to start with the seniors and work our way down to the freshman," Ms. Simmons began as she huddled the nervous students together. "That will give all you underclassmen a chance to see how it works, 'kay?" 

Raven wiped her sweaty palms on the skirt of her dress, then turned to Gabrielle. "You want to get out of here?" she said to her.

"Hmm?"

"I want to go over these lines a little bit more before we actually have to do it." Heat bloomed in her cheeks. "I mean, I don't care what they think, I just, you know…I want it to be good," she finished lamely.

"Right, sure," Gabrielle said, her tone mild. "We can go over to the chemistry lab. It's right across the hall." She turned to the nearest student to her and whispered, "Hey, we're gonna be across the hall, let us know when we're up."

"Sure," the student answered absentmindedly, without even looking in Gabrielle's direction.

"That's Theo," Gabrielle nonchalantly told Raven as they quietly crept out the back doors of the auditorium. "He's my homeboy."

"I bet."

* * *

Amaya and Ursula were halfway through their job—if tugging everything out of the closet and spreading it all over the room counted as halfway—when they were interrupted. 

"Oh, hey, guys," Gabrielle said, upon seeing the two other girls. She smiled winningly at the nervous-looking one, a girl she recognized from her English class. "Sorry, we didn't think anyone was gonna be in here."

The purple-haired one turned to glare at the newcomers. A smudge of dirt marked the bridge of her nose. "Why? Did you wanna be _alone_?"

Raven frowned and crossed her arms uneasily. She pointed her face toward the floor, allowing her hair to hide her face.

Gabrielle laid a comforting hand on Raven's tensed shoulder, then shrugged artlessly. "We were just going to go over our lines for the school play. We'll find another spot though, it's fine." After smiling again at Amaya, she grabbed Raven's forearm and began to lead her out the door.

"The school play..." The girl snickered to herself as she returned to the closet.

"Hey," Raven said suddenly, jerking from Gaby's grasp. She swiped her hair out of her eyes and glared at the purple-headed girl. "What's your problem?"

"_I_ don't have a problem," the girl answered. Her hands found her hips. "I'm not the one trying out for the school play. _You're_ the one who's going to end in front of all those people, wearing tights and going on about 'Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?'"

Raven's hands clenched at her sides, and she said, "M-maybe I don't _care_ what anybody else thinks. I…Did you ever think of that?"

The girl's voice stayed cool, though her amber eyes flashed. "If you don't care what anybody else thinks, why are you freaking out?"

"Freaking… freaking out?" Raven's lips twisted in anger. "This isn't freaking out! You wanna see me freak out?"

Gabrielle and Amaya winced and backed away. They could tell when something was about to explode.

* * *

Meanwhile, the black package made its way closer and closer to the chemistry lab. David's eyes and nose just peaked out over the top of it as he clumsily held it in front of him. A week of school had gotten him pretty used to the twists and turns of the old building, but not well enough so that he could do it without seeing where he was going. His nose was starting to hurt from all the times he'd jammed into sharp turns. 

One more right and a left. The chemistry lab was just ahead. Strangely, David could hear raised voices coming from the classroom. It almost sounded like a party, or, as he got even closer, a fight.

* * *

His knock—or, rather, kick—on the door came just in time as far as Gabrielle and Amaya was concerned. 

"I'll get it!" she shouted gaily and ran to open the door. The entrance of David and the package was a welcome sight.

"Hey, come on in!" Gabrielle said to David, looking for any way to distract the fighting girls from their argument. She granted him her best two-hundred-watt-smile, then turned to the others. With exaggerated glee, she sang, "Look, everybody, it's a big, ol' birthday present!"

The tactic seemed to work. Raven and Ursula glared at each other for a moment, brown eyes fighting black, but they stopped bickering and gazed at the package with unbridled interest. David set the package down on a lab table in the center of the room and breathed a sigh of relief. That thing was _heavy_.

"Hey," he said, looking around at the other students and feeling a little uncomfortable at suddenly being the center of attention. "Uh, is Amaya here?"

"That's me," Amaya said timidly, stepping forward.

"This was addressed to the chemistry lab," David told her. "Ms. Kowalski said you'd take care of it."

Amaya's eyes grew wide. "Really? What is it?"

"I don't know," David said. "I was kind of hoping you'd open it so I could find out."

The other three students crowded in with growing interest.

"Oh, I d-duh-don't know," Amaya said nervously. "That might be overstepping my authority."

"Come on, Amaya," Ursula chimed in. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"More detention," Raven said, shooting Ursula a dirty look.

"Oh, I didn't realize you were such a Miss Goody-Two-Shoes," Ursula shot back, glaring intensely.

"What did you just say?" Raven's face was beginning to turn red, her eyes narrowing, and her mouth contorting into a sneer.

"I agree with Raven," Gabrielle jumped in, hoping to prevent another fight. "We could get into serious trouble."

"No," Raven said, not wanting to back down. "I'm not afraid. I totally think we should."

"I agree with Raven," Gabrielle quickly repeated, desperate to keep the mood in the room jovial. "Let's open it."

All eyes turned to Amaya. She shrunk back. She'd never really had to deal with peer pressure that much, mostly because no students ever talked to her. Still, she was just as interested as the others to see what was inside.

"I'll do i-it," she said finally.

The kids turned to the black package on the table, all of them wondering what kind of surprise was awaiting them inside.

Amaya began to gradually unfold the red ribbon with the lab tweezers. But what happened next—the black hole, the flash of light and the explosion that rendered them unconscious—was something that none of the could have ever predicted.

_

* * *

_

Here's that glossary I promised:

dama - _noun _a term of endearment for a woman or a girl. As in, "You're such a great writer, dama! I wish I could be just like you some day." slang

dump_-_ _transitive verb _to abandon an event as no longer wanted, liked, or needed. As in, "Don't dump now; the party's just getting started!" slang

frosty- _adjective_ fashionable and sophisticated. As in, "Oh, you're so frosty, Mai; you've got the greatest boots!" slang

Testing - _noun_ Psychological Testing; mandatory to all police officers or federal workers who kill a person in the line of duty; mandatory to any student or military personel deemed unstable by a counselor, psychiatrist, or therapist. As in, "I'm off work today, boss. I've got Testing."

I can promise you that there'll be more where that came from.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** Woot, woot! Another chapter, basically on time. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Five **

_Pain. _

Gabrielle was curled in a corner, trying to draw air out of room which seemed to have plenty just a few moments before and now seemed to have none. From what sounded like a great distance, she could hear a thin _whoop-whoop_ sound, and she knew that this was her breathing in feverish little gasps, but that didn't change the feeling that she was drowning here in the corner of the science lab with blood staining her teeth and purple spots dancing behind her closed eyelids.

She didn't care so much. The pain was too great for her to care about such minor matters as breathing. The pain had swallowed her, and throbbed dully beneath her skin. Her face felt hot, her hand was slick with blood and sweat, and she couldn't open her eyes.

"G-G-Gabrielle?"

Gaby refused to move. The sour taste of blood was clouding her senses, and she could feel the small pain of a bitten tongue.

"Get u-up, G-Gabrielle," the girlish voice insisted. Amaya, Gaby realized, and considered sparing the energy to crack open an eye. She discarded the idea when a muscle spasm tensed her stomach.

"G-Gabrielle!'

A groan.

"Oh, d-dear. Where d-does it hurt?"

Another groan, this one gruffer than the first.

"C-c'mon, now." Gabrielle felt a hand grab her arm and pull, sending silvery sparks of up her flesh. "We-we need to g-get you to the nurse's oh-office."

"I'd rather not," Gaby said as coherently as possible. She fixed Amaya with a sociable glare. "I'm in a great deal of pain right now, and I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd let me go."

"Oh!" Amaya dropped Gabrielle's arm, sending another flash of pain throughout her body.

Amaya caught Gaby's involuntary wince and clucked apologetically. "I'm so s-sorry! Are yuh-y-you okay?"

"It's hurts…" Gaby spat blood onto the floor, then groaned again.

"I know, and I'm sorry."

"Eh, don't mention it, dama." Gaby managed a lopsided grin. "It just hurts like a _bitch_." She shook her head slightly to clear it and struggled to sit up. Amaya hurried to assist.

Gaby smiled her thanks, then gazed around the ruined classroom.

A blond boy was sitting across from them, cradling his arm, his back against the leg of a chemistry table. "That's a good question," he responded, his voice dazed.

Across the room, the purple-haired punk was still unconscious. Raven was kneeling over the other girl's prone body, leisurely pouring water onto the other girl's face from an Erlenmeyer flask. The water came out in a large gush rather than a controlled trickle, since her shaking hands were unable to hold the flask steady. But it worked.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" the girl spat, wiping her face with her sleeve and jerking away from Raven. A noise similar to a growl escaped from her throat.

"Oh, U-Ursula," Allison stammered, "shuh-she was only tr-trying to help."

The girl—Ursula, presumably— scowled.

"That was a great idea, opening that box," Raven said mildly as she primly dabbed at water that had splashed onto the skirt of her dress.

Ursula snarled. "_You_ were the one who wanted to open it."

"No, actually, I wasn't. You challenged me."

"I _challenged_ you? What are you talking about, _challenged_? Who are you, Hulk Hogan?"

"_Who_?" Raven said, eyes darkening. "Do I look like him, I wonder? I was always under the impression that I looked live Raven Francesca Rodriguez-Cook. _You_, on the other hand, look like a damned idiot!"

"Enough!" the blond boy shouted from his station at the front of the room.

Raven snapped at him, like a crocodile snapping up wading toddlers. "Don't you _dare_ tell me what do, noob. And besides, _you_ were the one that bought that stupid thing in here in the first place, so maybe we should be yelling at _your_ ugly face!"

"Raven…" Gabrielle sighed. "Just, don't, okay." She very much preferred the quiet, pensive Raven to this yelling lunatic.

"Y-yeah," Amaya added weakly.

"Look," the boy said, ignoring the pleading girls and directing his attention to Raven, "we _all_ decided to open it, so deal with it."

Raven stared at him for a moment, then went to examine Gaby.

"Are you all right?" she asked quietly.

"A little beaten up," Gabrielle answered, and spat another globule of saliva onto the ground. All white and all right this time. "I'm fine. Help me up." Both Amaya and Raven grabbed Gaby's arms and pulled, ignoring her small squeals of pain.

With Raven's support, Gabrielle went over to look through the tattered box. She turned it upside down and examined from the sides. Unlike before, the box was just a box. She remembered there had been a deep, dark hole, different than the bottom of the box that she saw then. There was no chasm into darkness, no explosions of light, even the thick, red ribbon was gone. The box was totally plain.

"Maybe this was some senior prank, like the first week of school thing," Gabrielle suggested doubtfully.

"Maybe," Amaya agreed half-heartedly.

"It probably was..." The boy's words trailed off and were lost in the sound of the classroom door abruptly opening. The kids looked around—the place was a complete mess! But it was too late to do anything about it.

From behind the creaking door, a school janitor peered inside. He wore large, black rubber gloves, held a mop at his side and pushed a garbage cart full of trash that leaked some sort disgusting and thick juice. His creepy and shifty gaze turned in suspicion as he saw the kids.

"What's going on in here?" he growled.

They stared at him, unable to think of any excuse for a full five seconds.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Amaya spoke up. "Uh, n-nothing imp-p-portant. Just doing some extra cruh-credit work for, uh, c-chemistry." The other kids nodded in unison.

The janitor sneered and closed the door. The kids breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are you sure?" the janitor barked at them, suddenly shoving the door back open with his clumsy garbage cart.

_What was with this guy? _

"Positive," Ursula said innocently, her eyes wide and soft.

The janitor glared at them all for a moment longer, then left.

The room was still.

"Well," Ursula finally said, stretching her bruised arms over her head, "while this was great fun—really, let's do it again some time—I have a real life to get back to."

Gabrielle scrutinized the clock on the wall. "Yeah, we've gotta get back to the audition."

"But we didn't even practice," Raven suddenly realized. "And you're hurt."

"I'm fine," Gaby insisted, making a face. "Quit fussing."

Raven scowled, but, after a nervous glance at the clock, held Gaby's arm and helped her hurry towards the door. The boy jumped in front of them.

"Whoa, whoa, _whoa_. Aren't you guys forgetting something?"

They shrugged, exchanging looks and making to edge around him.

"How about _the explosion_ that just occurred?!" he exploded.

"Hey," Gaby said affably, "whatever your name is..."

"David," he supplied. "David Kent."

"Right." She smiled, and he saw that her bottom teeth were tinted red. "Okay. David, calm down. We're all fine. But tell you what—if I grow a third foot or something, I'll call you, alright?"

"How can you be so calm about this?" he demanded.

Ursula laughed, clicking her fingernails against the Formica tables. "What should we do about it? What _can_ we do about it? Tell someone what happened? What're we gonna say?"

Raven nodded. It was the first time they'd agreed.

"I think we sh-should just keep it a secret," Amaya chimed in, her voice steady. "J-just between the fuh-five of us."

"I'm cool with that," the Ursula responded.

"Me, as well," Raven agreed.

"Yup," Gabrielle added. She cast an apologetic look David's way. "Sorry, Superman."

Before he could comment, both Gaby and Raven had disappeared, leaving him alone with two girls and a broken box.

Suddenly worried he might lose his job over this incident, he began to try to piece the mutilated scraps of black paper together, seeing if he could get the package to look like it did before all of the weirdness happened.

"Hey, chillax," Ursula said as she and Amaya began to straighten up the room. "Everything'll work out. Besides, man…it's Friday!"

* * *

The sky was miserably spitting rain by the time Gaby was able to leave the school. She checked her pockets without hope and found she had indeed left her umbrella at the house. Hatless, gloveless, and with only her plastic jacket as protection against the rain, she stood at the bus stop around the corner of the school with the school's secretary, Miss Meadows, in spite of Miss Meadows' protestations that it was really unnecessary. Gabrielle didn't like the way Miss Meadows looked, with all the color gone form her cheeks and dark smudges under eyes and little lines running from the corners of her mouth. Besides, it felt good to look after some one else, rather than the other way around.

The airbus pulled up in a cloud of exhaust, and Miss Meadows started off the curb. She paused, then turned to little Gaby with her hair sopping wet and a bitten tongue, and said, "Aren't you coming?"

"No, ma'am, Miss Meadows," Gaby said. "Great day for a walk."

Miss Meadows hovered awkwardly in the middle of the street, conceivably trying to decide if the student was being sarcastic or not, then slid up into the airbus.

Gaby waved jovially, then turned onto Watertower Boulevard, passed a collection of small shops. Many of them looked seedy, a trifle desperate around the edges. Gaby strolled passed secondhand clothing stores trying to pass themselves off as grunge boutiques and shoe stores with signs reading BUY AMERICAN and CLEARANCE SALE in the windows. 

The house she shared with her mom was tucked in a maze of side alleys and walkways, sidling along the line between the rich and the poor. Pretty flowerbeds that had been carefully tended hid the wires of an incredible security system.

Gaby jammed her passkey into the lock and breezed inside, pitching her bag into the stairwell on her way into the kitchen. She programmed the AutoChef for coffee and toast, then, on a yawn, called for music.

To the tune of _Traumerei_, she brought up the _Eden News _on the kitchen's monitor and scanned the headlines while fake caffeine bolstered her system. The coffee tasted like boiled pencil shavings, and the AutoChef had burned her toast—again—but she at it anyway, with a vague thought of replacing the appliance.

She frowned over the article of the cats. Six cats and three kittens found that month, all dead the same way: hung upside down in trees. Their pictures were printed in black and white so that guileless civilians couldn't quite see the bloody froth that caked the cats' lips.

Her father's picture was in the _News_, Gaby recalled, when he died. But they hadn't shown him hung in a tree. They hadn't shown bleeding in the bathtub, either. They'd shown him in a police uniform instead, with his badge shining proudly on his chest. They'd shown him looking happy and clean and they'd said nice things about him, and Gaby could only wonder why it was any different for cats.

The unfamiliar buzz of the front door brought a frown to her lips and annoyance to her eyes. The computer monitor blipped off as she rose from her chair to see who was interrupting her. One glance at the security screen wiped the frown away. She called for the music to stop and rushed to open the door.

"Hey, Sinead."

"You forgot, didn't you?" Sinead Freeboot swirled in, a jangle of bracelets, a puff of scent. Her hair was wavy and glittery silver today, a shade that would change with her next mood. Her matching dress came to her thighs and was made of a sheer, synthetic material. Her elfin face was sharp, a triangle of pale gold dominated by large, deep-set green eyes painted with silver shadow and a wide, mobile mouth stained with red. She flipped her hair back to where it sparkled like stars against her impossibly thin waist.

"No, I didn't." Gaby shut the door and reengaged the locks, then grinned somewhat sheepishly. "Forgot what?"

"Dinner, dancing, and debauchery."

"Ooh…new word, eh?" Gabrielle teased. "What are you, good friends with a dictionary?"

Sinead poked her tongue out at Gaby and let out a long-suffering sigh. She eyed Gaby's loose shirt and ratty sneakers with disdain. "You can't be going out in that."

Feeling drab, as she always did within twenty feet of Sinead's outrageous outfits, Gaby nervously shuffled her feet. "I like these clothes. Listen—"

Sinead rolled her eyes and accusingly pointed at Gabrielle with an emerald-tipped finger. "You forgot."

"Sorry," Gaby apologized. At her friend's angry pout, she added, "You look great."

"You look tired," said Sinead, more in accusation than sympathy. "And you're missing a button."

Gaby's hand went automatically to her a jacket, which she had forgotten to take off after she had gotten into the house, and felt the loose threads. "Shit. I knew it." In disgust, she tugged off her jacket and tossed it aside, not caring where it landed. "Look, I'm sorry. I did forget. I had a lot on my mind today.

Sinead sat on the U-shaped sofa for a moment, tapping her fingers on the arm of the couch. Finally, she said, "School stuff, I bet." Gaby shrugged and nodded. "Here I was hoping you had a date. You really need to start dating guys who aren't crazy, Gabe."

"I saw that image consultant you fixed me up with, remember? He wasn't crazy; he was just an idiot."

"You're too picky—and that was six months ago."

Since he'd tried to get her in the sack by offering her a free lip tattoo, and was about twice her age, Gaby thought it wasn't nearly long enough, but she sagely kept her opinion to herself.

"It's fine, Gabe," Sinead said generously, then sprang up from her chair, the crystals in her ears sparkling. "Just please go get out of that outfit; it gives me chills. I'll order you some Chinese."

Relief had Gabrielle's shoulders sagging and sighing with liberation. For Sinead, she would have put up with an evening at a loud, noisy, crowded, obnoxious, and overall nauseating club, peeling randy pilots and sex-starved sky-station techs off her chest. The idea of eating Chinese food with her feet up was like heaven.

"You don't mind?" Gaby forced herself to say as she slipped into the spare bedroom where she kept her clothes. The room was papered with one-paneled cartoons and comic strips. Silk dragonflies of myriad colors hung from filaments tacked to the ceiling. The large bay window filtered in pale green light, illuminating a cramped room stuffed with boxes upon boxes of clothes.

Sinead waved the words away as she tapped the restaurant she wanted into the computer. "I'm the epitome of calm right now; don't kill it with your annoying questions. You want egg rolls?"

"Sure, but make sure it has meat that is good for people in the United States. No rabbit or squid or anything like that, okay?" Gabrielle pulled out some faded jeans and a red EPSD sweatshirt.

"Gotcha, Gabe." Feeling charitable, Sinead charged dinner to her father's R-World Card. "True. Got any of that wine I bought over the last time I was here?"

"Most of the second bottle." Gaby bypassed into the kitchen to program two glasses. "My ma got into it." To keep her voice light and silence from permeating, she pressed on. "So, are you still seeing that aspiring dentist?"

"Nope." Sinead half-heartedly examined a neatly-penciled cartoon tacked on the wall, then dismissed it. "It was getting a _little_ too intense. I didn't mind him falling in love with my teeth, but he wanted the whole package. He wanted to get _married_."

Knowing her duty, Gabrielle intoned, "The bastard."

"I know," Sinead agreed. She slunk over to the couch and fell carefully. Perfectly. As though that dentist could see across the miles of streets that separated his house from Gaby's…as though he was watching Sinead at every moment, so that everything, every little way Sinead moved her hands or blinked her eyes, had to be pretty. "You can't trust anyone."

Silence stretched. The barest tick of the old-fashioned wall clock echoed against the soft sound of the girls' breathing.

"Well…" Sinead said. "See ya."

"Wait, where're you going?" Gaby struggled to keep relief from showing on her face.

"Club hopping," Sinead answered, as though her supposed best friend were daft. Those beautiful eyes in that beautiful face were as expressionless as shards of glass twinkling beside a country road. She tossed back the last swallow of wine left in her glass and headed for the door.

"You said—"

"I said _you _didn't have to go." Sinead combed a hand through her mane of hair and giggled. "I've still got places to be. You'll be fine on your own."

Gabrielle only sipped from her glass.

Sinead hovered for a moment, perhaps waiting for a good-bye, but she got none. The door closed silently behind her.

"Shutters closed," Gaby ordered. "Lights off. Music on." Obediently, the room darkened and was filled with the sound of sobbing strings. She closed her eyes and laid her head in the crook of her arm, allowing herself to be lost in the music.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** I know I'm late, and I'm sorry, but this chapter took longer to edit and rewrite than I'd expected. Prepare for a text avalanche.

* * *

**Chapter Six **

Raven hated the rain.

With the rain came memories of her father's big bear hugs and booming laugh. He'd liked the rain, and used to drive her mother crazy by leaving the window of their bedroom open as he watched a passing storm.

Raven could still remember him, and love him, and she hated herself for it. She hated herself for curling up in his favorite chair in the living room, inhaling his familiar smell: sandalwood and cigarette smoke and sweat. She hated herself for missing the photographs of him that used to hang in the entryway of their small apartment; a few months after his desertion, her mother Taranee had removed all of the pictures he'd appeared in, stolidly convinced that the pain would go away if she didn't have to see his face. The wood paneling was not as faded in those spots, and whenever Raven looked at those sad, blank squares, she was cursed with memories of when the apartment felt warm and safe and he would swing her up in his arms and tell her that everything would be alright.

She let herself stroll, her boots nearly soundless on the sidewalk. She'd learned not to hurry—had taught herself not to push, not to rush, but to take things as they came. And in a very real way to embrace every single moment. It would get easier, her mother said, and Raven had to believe that.

She spotted green spears of daffodils in a half whiskey barrel next under the awning of a restaurant. They might have trembled a bit in the chilly breeze, but they made her think spring. Everything was new in spring.

Maybe this spring, she'd be new, too.

Happy with the thought, she shifted her eyes up to the wide front window of the restaurant. More diner than restaurant, she corrected. Counter service, two and four-tops, booths, all in red and white. Pies and cakes on display, and the kitchen open to the counter. A couple of waitresses bustled around with trays and coffeepots.

Lunch crowd, she realized. She'd forgotten lunch. After the auditions were over, she'd headed straight for The Lyric, and had had nothing to eat there save for a small bag of plain popcorn.

She backtracked to the door and pushed inside.

It was also unexpectedly golden inside the bistro. The sun was low in the sky now, and it fell through the restaurant's west-facing windows in long, red-gold beams. The air was a thick and warm, laden with the hot greasy scents of onions and burger patties and powdery-sweet waffles sizzling on an unseen grill. There is a febrile excitement, too, in the oddly hushed crowd that gathered at tables covered with wine-red plastic tablecloths. A giant commercial coffee pot, plated with silver and polished to a dull shine, gurgled contentedly in time to the soft rock that blared from the juke box.

To her surprise, she saw Taranee, polishing off a plate of meat loaf. They locked eyes, and her mother knew she was busted.

Raven slid into the seat beside her mother and stared reproachfully at the plate of food. "I see you're still on the diet you started this morning."

Taranee smiled sheepishly and nervously adjusted her wire-rimmed spectacles. "Eh, well…it's diet soda."

"Oh, that makes it all better then."

"Oh, ha ha, Captain Sarcastic."

Any comeback Raven could've made was interrupted by a pouncing waitress, her auburn hair forced back into an efficient ponytail.

"Morning, ma'am," the waitress said to Raven, her a voice a lazy, Southern drawl. "Meat loaf's the special today. Comes with mashed potatoes and mushrooms and a biscuit."

"No, thanks," Raven said politely. "A glass of water would be great, though."

With the waitress gone, the table lapsed into small talk.

"How was school today?"

"Oh, you know…the usual," Raven said vaguely. She couldn't meet her mother's searching gaze, worried that Taranee would see the weirdness of that afternoon in her eyes. She cleared her throat lightly. "I, um…I tried out for the school play."

"You _really_ tried out for it?" Taranee asked, surprised.

"Yes," Raven said, blushing faintly. "Let's not make a big deal out of it. I'm sure I didn't get the stupid part anyway."

"But if you did…that would be _muy impresionante_." She shrugged off her daughter's dark stare and sipped from her tube of diet Pepsi.

Just then, the waitress came back with the glass of water and the bill. "Anything else—?" She started to say, but was interrupted by the ding of a bell. "'Scuse," she said, her tone wry, and absently set the glass on the edge of the table. "Duty calls." She slipped away without another word.

"The counselor made me do it," Raven continued. "I thought I'd just give it try, just to get her off my back." Raven noticed the glass teeter on the edge of the table. She glared at it; it made her nervous. She thought about moving it to a safer spot, and had raised her arm to move it when her mother interrupted.

"So, what was the part that you read?" Taranee asked.

"What?" Raven let her hand drop and her eyes shifted to her mother, her mind still on the cola. A strange shiver of heat crawled up her spine. "The usual, I suppose. _Romeo and Juliet._ I think she remixed it, though—it's modernized. Juliet is the daughter of a mobster boss, and Romeo is the son of a police chief or a politician or some such thing."

"Oh. That's...progressive," Taranee commented with vague derision. She turned to grab the bill, her arm sweeping dangerously close glass that had rested precariously on the table. Raven spoke up.

"Mom, could you move that..."

But Taranee's arm swept safely by. The glass was no longer on the table's edge. In fact, it had moved backward—exactly where Raven had thought it should be.

_How did that move...? _

"Move what?" Taranee asked her, fishing credits out of her purse.

Raven stared at the glass, her eyes darkening. Something very weird had just happened.

* * *

Amaya dreamed of sanctuary. The great house gleamed bride-white in the moonlight, as majestic a force breasting the slope that reigned over eastern dunes and western marsh as a queen upon her throne. The house stood as it had for more than a century, a grand tribute to man's vanity and brilliance, near the dark shadows of the forest of live oaks, where the river flowed in murky silence.

Within the shelter of trees, fireflies blinked gold, and night creatures stirred, braced to hunt or be hunted. Wild things bred there in shadows, in secret.

There were no lights to brighten the tall, narrow windows of Sanctuary. No lights to spread welcome over its graceful porches, its grand doors. Night was deep, and the breath of it moist from the sea. The only sound to disturb it was of wind rustling through the leaves of the great oaks and the dry clicking --- like bony fingers --- of the palm fronds. The white columns stood like soldiers guarding the wide veranda, but no one opened the enormous front door to greet her.

As she walked closer, she could hear the crunch of sand and shells on the road under her feet. Wind chimes tinkled, little notes of song. The porch swing creaked on its chain, but no one lazed upon it to enjoy the moon and the night.

The smell of jasmine and musk roses played on the air, underscored by the salty scent of the sea. She began to hear that too, the low and steady thunder of water spilling over sand and sucking back into its own heart.

The beat of it, that steady and patient pulse, reminded all who inhabited the island of Lost Desire that the sea could reclaim the land and all on it at its whim. 

She walked quickly, hurrying up the steps, across the veranda, closing her hand over the big brass handle that glinted like a lost treasure.

The door was locked.

She twisted it right, then left, shoved against the thick mahogany panel. _Let me in_, she thought as her heart began to thud in her chest. _I've come home. I've come back._

But the door remained shut and locked. When she pressed her face against the glass of the tall windows flanking it, she could see nothing but darkness within.

And was afraid.

She ran now, around the side of the house, over the terrace, where flowers streamed out of pots and lilies danced in chorus lines of bright color. The music of the wind chimes became harsh and discordant, the fluttering of fronds was a hiss of warning. She struggled with the next door, weeping as she beat her fists against it.

_Please, please, don't shut me out. I want to come home._

She sobbed as she stumbled down the garden path. She would go to the back, in through the screened porch. It was never locked—a kitchen should always be open to company.

But she couldn't find it. The trees sprang up, thick and close, the branches and draping moss barred her way.

She was lost, tripping over roots in her confusion, fighting to see through the dark as the canopy of trees closed out the moon. The wind rose up and howled and slapped at her in flat-handed, punishing blows.

Spears of saw palms struck out like swords. She turned, but where the path had been was now the river, cutting her off from Sanctuary. The high grass along its slippery banks waved madly.

It was then she saw herself, standing alone and weeping on the other bank.

Then she woke, gasping and sobbing.

It was just a dream, she told herself as she drew her knees to her chest and shook off her fear. Just a bad dream. She had no business being spooked by a silly dream, anyway.

Three-fifteen, she noted by the old-fashioned alarm clock on the nightstand. That was becoming typical. There was nothing worse than the three A.M. jitters. She sat there, her oversized T-shirt bunched over her thighs, and ordered herself to get a grip.

She figured any first-year psych student could translate the dream. The house represented comfort, maybe, while the lock doors symbolized…her anxiety?

Amaya wiped a film of sweat off of her brow and reached for her anti-anxiety meds. She dry-swallowed the pill, ignoring the bitterness, and glanced around the bedroom. She kept it simple, practical. Though she'd traveled widely, there were few mementos. Except the photographs. She'd matted and framed the black-and-white prints, choosing the ones among her mother's work that she found the most restful to decorate the walls of the room where she slept.

There, an empty park bench, the black wrought iron all fluid curves. And there, a single willow, its lacy leaves dipping low over a small, glassy pool. A moonlit garden was a study in shadow and texture and contrasting shapes. The lonely beach with the sun just breaking the horizon tempted the viewer to step inside the photo and feel the sand rough underfoot.

How long had she been asleep? She'd meant for only a small nap, to relax herself after such an odd day. The melatonin must've worked, she mused. Otherwise, she couldn't've slept so long.

With a vague thought of decreasing her dosage, she padded out of her room and down the stairs, toward the scent of cooked meat and soy sauce.

The kitchen was a working woman's room, with granite counters and glittering stainless steel. There were three wide windows, framed only by curved and carved wood trim. A banquette in smoky gray was tucked under them for family meals. The floor was creamy white tile, the walls white and unadorned. No fancy work for the Wendelhalls.

Yet there were homey touches in the gleam of copper pots that hung from hooks, the hanks of dried peppers and garlic, the shelf holding antique kitchen tools. The old brick hearth alone, and it brought back reminders of a time when the kitchen had been the core of this house, a place for gathering, for lingering. It was such a warm place, and her mother's second favorite spot in the house.

Her mother was there now, settled into a stool at the breakfast bar and enthusiastically slurping up a bowl of beef stew. Her face was a cheerful oval, the cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass.

Hay Lin smiled when she saw her daughter. Her deep-set, almond-shaped eyes winked happily. "'Afternoon, sleepyhead."

Amaya was unimpressed. "W-Why didn't you w-wuh-wake me?" she demanded as petulantly as a child.

"You haven't slept that well in years," Hay Lin said smoothly. "I didn't have the heart to wake you. You hungry?"

Amaya examined the pot bubbling on their small yet serviceable range. "You p-put in too muh-much soy sauce, again," she said reproachfully as she served herself a bowl. "The salt will k-kill me. Do w-we have any leftover rice?"

"All out," Hay Lin said. "I could fry some…?"

Amaya shook her head and slurped some stew, somewhat dejectedly. "I suh-suppose the AutoChef 2.0 br-broke again, huh?"

"Yes…but it's not _your_ fault," Hay Lin rushed to add. "It's, uh…a very unique design. Very innovative. I mean, I'm sure that…it's…you'll fix it, sweetie."

Her daughter refused to be cheered. "Yeah, ah-after I fuh-fix the automatic s-self-cleaning toi-l-let bowl, which I'll guh-get to after I f-fix the holo-dream machine, which of c-cuh-course I'll get to r-right after I fuh-fix the ham-stuh-er subway." She pointed to the ceiling where a set of clear, pneumatic tubes spread across the room and came to a stop on the wall just next to the light switch. A small sign at the end read " Kitchen Street."

"You'll fix those, too," Hay Lin said brightly. She finished her stew, and leaned over to press a kiss on her daughter's cheek.

A flash went through Amaya's brain. Circuits began to fire. It felt as if her mind were actually expanding inside her head. There was a weird, wet feeling that trembled down her neck.

"I…I…"

Hay Lin's brow furrowed worriedly. "Sweetheart? Are you all right?" She stretched out a hand to feel Amaya's forehad.

Panic swam into Amaya's eyes. "Don't…don't touch me!"

She shot out of the room and spiraled through their quiet house, speedily outdistancing her mother. She tore into the basement, ignoring the "No Humans Allowed" sign, and dove into the darkness below.

"Lights on," she bellowed. "Fifty-percent. C'mon. Ev'rything _on_."

The room came to life with flashing lights and buzzing sounds.

With a not-quite-sane light in her eyes, she sat at her computer. "Computer on. Wendelhall. ID 77414Q. Open sciencegeek file."

_Voiceprint and ID recognized, Amaya. Proceed. _

"Good, good. Lessee…open subfile sciencesubway. Calculate compression."

Her system whirred, reminding her that it was another one of her appliances that needed to be replaced. Even when she slapped it with the palm of her hand, it was several moments before it settled into a jerky hum.

_Compression is level seven. Increase/decrease? _

"Abort," Amaya said absently. So the amount of compression wasn't the problem. Maybe it was—

A knock came on the door. "Sweetheart? You're scaring me. Is everything alright?"

"I'm fine, Mother!" Amaya shouted. "Leave me alone for a minute, alrgiht?" Cooly, she activated the soundproofing system so she couldn't hear her mother's aggravated wails. After a moment's thought, she initiated lockdown, as well.

Em, Amaya's hamster, stared at her reproachfully with large, blue eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Amaya said. "I'll make it up to her later."

To the computer, she commanded, "What is the direction of the air flow?"

_Insufficient information. Inability to compute. _

"Stupid thing," Amaya hissed savagely. "Save and lock on voiceprint, Wendellhall. ID 77414Q. Computer off."

Jerkily, she sprang up from her seat and dug in th mess of scrap metal and experiments. She found a scuba tank from her dad's old army days. Deftly, she disconnected the valve. She found a rubber hose and reconnected the tank to the subway system.

Upstairs, Hay Lin was worriedly stirring her stew around in the bowl. Amaya had never run off like that before, and it was due cause for concern. A voice boomed over the house intercom, interrupting her troubled thoughts.

"Mom? Em wants some carrots, 'kay?"

"I'll bring some down," Hay Lin shouted, relieved Amaya hadn't gone off and hurt herself.

"No, no, no...He's coming up!" said Amaya, as she gently placed Em into the canister, closed the lid and placed it into the end of the tube. The little hamster looked around curiously. Was this the way to food?

"Next stop kitchen, next stop kitchen, no smoking, loud talking or radio playing, next stop kitchen," Marie bellowed over the intercom with her hands over her mouth, trying to imitate a subway train announcer. She slammed her hand down on a large red button and _floom!_, the canister lifted off and shot up through the tube. Em shot up through the basement ceiling, spun through the den, zoomed through the laundry room and headed for its final destination.

A large, buzzing alarm sounded just before a whoosh of air came shooting into the living room. Above Hay Lin's head, she could see Em—safely in her travel canister—come flying in through the clear tube. The canister turned the corner in the ceiling and slowed down to a stop on the wall. The hamster's journey was complete. Amaya burst into the room.

"I figured it out!" she screamed excitedly.

"That's great!" congratulated Hay Lin, picking carrots out of Amaya's bowl and feeding them to Em. "How'd you figure it out so quickly, though, when you've been working on it for a month now?"

Amaya stopped to think.

"I don't know. It just sort of came to me, all of a sudden."

* * *

It was the rain that woke her.

For a moment, Ursula simply lay there. She was drenched with sweat, shivering with cold. Her heart beat too fast, too loud, and she curled around it while the dream faded.

"God," she gasped into her pillow. "Oh, God. Lights, oh, please. One-hundred percent." They flashed on, sun-bright, chasing even a hint of shadow out of the room. Still, she scanned it, every corner, looking for ghosts as the nasty edge of the dream jabbed through her gut.

She forced back the tears. They were useless, and they were weak. Just as it was useless, it was weak, to let herself be frightened by dreams. By ghosts.

But she continued to shake as she hugged the pillow tighter against her stomach. She sat and comforted herself with the pillow as a child might a teddy bear.

Nausea coated her stomach, and she continued to rock, to pray she wouldn't be sick and add one more misery to the night.

As carefully as an old woman she slid off the mattress.

It was a hideous room, she knew. The dark wallpaper in the cramped space was marked with water-stains they weren't glaring, but stealthy and brown, like the phantom thoughts that trouble anxious minds. The threadbare carpet could only be described as shit-colored, and although the narrow table was clean and the lid on the plastic waste-can was shut, there was an odor of sardines and something else—unwashed feet, maybe—which was almost not there. An odor as stealthy as the water-stains on the wallpaper.

Her uncle hadn't wanted her to live up here. That was the main reason she did.

She fished around in the mess for a T-shirt and pullover, and tugged them hurriedly over her head, walking towards the entryway as she did. Before she opened the door, she checked the peep. Satisfied, she slipped out into the rain.

The air tasted misty, like dream about to vanish. She snatched up her airboard rather than the scooter. She often spent her weekends at the boarding park, and she was itching to nail down a trick she'd been working on for the past month, especially before the weather started getting too cold. A little thing like rain wouldn't keep her from the ritual.

Plus, she needed to get out the house before Uncle Daigh woke up. She didn't really feel like explaining why she'd been late three times in one week, and she especially didn't feel like explaining what had happened in the chemistry lab during her detention.

Ursula rounded the corner onto Beck Avenue. She crouched down low and, after shifting her foot to the side, tilted the nose of the board off of the ground, allowing her to manual around the corner. She ollied in the air and tried a double-impossible. It flipped underneath her—once, once and a half...

_Crack!_

"Fuck," Ursula growled as she landed hard on her feet and her board smacked the ground behind her. After checking her legs for scrapes, she hopped back to pick it up. That was another trick she couldn't seem to get down. She could get the board to flip once in a single impossible, but the double still eluded her.

Ursula reached the park after a few minutes and skidded to a stop just outside of the fence. Closed, a sign in front of the gate said. They'd closed it because of the rain.

With a furrow of her brow, she tried the gate. It was unlocked. She almost laughed at the absurdity of it all before hurrying inside.

She pulled on her battered knee and elbow pads and fastened her helmet. She'd been airboarding long enough to know that every time you stick a trick, there was at least twenty times you bit it. And the kind of trick she was about to try was definitely hard enough to do some serious damage.

She smiled at the thought.

Ursula pushed her board forward, resting just the tail on the lip of the curved concrete. She took a deep breath...and dropped in.

She sped toward the far edge, her legs tensing, and her feet ready to stomp the board into the air. She rolled across the bottom of the bowl, moving ever faster. The opposite lip was quickly approaching, when, suddenly, a strange feeling—a swooping, hot-cold feeling almost like electricity— surged through her limbs. It was weird, but it felt powerful, it felt good.

Her heart thrummed loudly in her ears as she popped the board up, and it soared into the air. Her feet reached for it as she began to come back down...but it was gone.

Ursula skidded along her kneepads, an automatic move she'd learned as a beginner, and kneeled at the bottom of the depression, frustrated. She shook her head dejectedly. She hadn't pulled it off. She turned around to grab the board, but strangely, it wasn't there. She looked all around her. It was gone. Then, she looked up.

High above her, at least fifty feet into the air, Ursula's board flew through the sky. _How did I kick it so far up?_ The board reached its peak and began to plummet back to earth, straight towards Ursula's head, but, to her amazement, she reached above her head and caught it like a wiffle ball.

She stared at the board in her hand and examined it. What was going on? She'd gotten a new paintjob a month before, but it wasn't _that_ good. Ursula climbed back to the top of the bowl and dropped in for another try. Something was seriously wrong here. A crowd huddled around. Skating at top speed, Ursula it the opposite lip—and flipped.

Again, the light-as-air feeling gripped her, only this time, she didn't lose her board. Backward, end over end, she did a complete flip out of the bowl, twisting 360 degrees as she did so, and landed back on the ground.

"Holy _fuck_."

* * *

On Monday morning, David sat at his kitchen table silently shoving cereal and milk into his mouth, his hair its usual rumpled, morning mess. He stared dully at the delicate porcelain houses that his mother collected and arranged in lieu of flowers and paintings. If David stared long enough, they looked like the houses on his street, with teeny tiny mock-Gothic numbers and little nosy people peeking out the windows. The people were very much like the ones who lived in the real houses on his street, just as fake and painted on.

At the head of the table, in a plain black suit and tie—an undertaker's uniform—sat his father, scrolling through the news on the comp unit as he buttered a croissant. To David's left side, his mother, Cornelia Kent, flipped half-heartedly through a copy of _Modern Homes of Today_, occasionally pausing to look at a recipe or craft idea, her food untouched.

A morning ritual. Even though they didn't speak, the family always ate breakfast together.

"Take it easy on the butter there, honey," his mother said, breaking the silence without looking up from her magazine. "Your cholesterol levels are high."

His father scrolled down on his monitor and grunted. "This is low-fat margarine, as a matter of fact."

The table was silent again.

David deliberately cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. "Well. I'm leaving."

David's father pulled back the sleeve of his crisp, white shirt and examined his wrist unit. "Already?"

Cornelia closed her magazine and stood up. "It's all right," she hurriedly assured her husband. "I'll 'link Charlie, he can bring the car around a little earlier today. You can finish your breakfast."

David looked at his mother, at that odd light that crept into her eyes whenever she spoke. He could see her being pretty once, though now the angles of her face were too sharp, the hollows of her eyes too deep.

"It's okay," David said as he dropped his cereal bowl in the sink for their in-house aide, Somerset, to wash. "I think I'm going to walk today."

David's parents stared at him, then at each other.

"Walk?" Cornelia said, wrinkling up her nose in confusion. "Are you feeling okay, honey?" She made a move to check his forehead temperature.

David swatted her hand away. "Yeah, Mom, I'm fine." David grabbed his backpack and threw it over his shoulder, then stepped out into the rain.

His neighborhood was a grid of pretty perfect rows of pretty perfect houses. Each and every one of them was structured the same, save for their colors. This one blue. That one white.

David walked slowly pass the cookie-cutter houses. He belonged here, he knew. He belonged with these pretty perfect houses on their curving streets named after famous dead people because he was both pretty and perfect.

He could never say how much he hated being David. It was better to cover his mouth to shut the words in anytime he thought bout them because that was what he was supposed to do. Pretending was easier. Pretending was what everyone wanted from him. Pretending was what it meant to live inside a pretty perfect house, even if it was only pretty and perfect on the outside.

Out the corner of his eye, he could see gawking faces pressed against windows to watch him run. Just ahead of him, grade-schoolers hung out at the street corner, umbrellas poised pompously above their heads, the lot of them giggling and talking and staring at the strange boy who was walking in the rain. David slowed when he saw them, and stared.

Strangely transfixed, he watched a silver bus groan to a stop in front of the kids. Behind it, a stream of impatient drivers who had clearly been following the slow bus through the neighborhood for a while, were not too happy about it. Paying them no mind, the bus driver flipped on his caution lights, and the grade school kids began to shuffle on board.

David had a feeling—a bad feeling that overwhelmed his thoughts and body movement. The feeling that something very terrible was about to happen.

And it did. One of the drivers, a stodgy businessman who'd been yammering on his pocket 'link, got tired of waiting. He pulled out of the line of cars and floored the gas, hoping to get past the bus before it started up again.

Across the street, a chubby grade-schooler ran toward the road, his plastic overcoat glistening in the rain. He was panting and shouting for the bus to wait, though his voice was lost in the wind. He hurried through a neighbor's backyard, right for the street.

Without fully understanding why, David ran. Wind burned in his eyes, and his heart thrummed loudly, painfully, in his chest, but he sped away from the sidewalk, past the bus, across the street just as the little kid as about to step in front of the speeding car.

The driver of the car slammed on his brakes at the sight of David blurring by in front of him. David grabbed the kid, pulling him back to safety on the lawn.

"Oh, shit!" the driver exclaimed as soon as he'd jumped out of his car. "Are you okay?"

The grade-school kid was in shock. Nothing ever happened on those pretty perfect streets, nothing that was never meticulously planned. He nodded stiffly and edged toward the school bus.

"I'm sorry; I didn't see him coming!" The driver looked at David, suspicion clouding his gaze. "How did you...?"

David shook his head and shrugged. He had no idea.

* * *

Notice how I made it rain for four days straight? I've got MAD SKILLZ!  
...  
Seriously, though, I think I just screwed with physics. A wizard did it, I suppose.

Stay tuned for next time!


End file.
